Capt. David Swatland, Deputy Commander of Coast Guard Sector San Francisco, speaks to the media aboard the CGC Sockeye in San Francisco Bay November 12, 2007. The media was aboard the Sockeye to view beach cleanup efforts and the damage to fenders along the Bay Bridge. The M/V Cosco Busan struck the fender system on the bridge November 7, 2007, spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into the bay. (Unified Command photo by Coast Guard Petty Officer Second Class Prentice Danner)I said this when Congress shoved this insanity known as the Department of Homeland Security down the American taxpayers throats --
"This will be one of the biggest waste of time, money, energy, manpower and skin in US Government history, and the government agencies that are absorbed into this new monster bureaucracy will suffer as well. The American taxpayer can stand by to take a broadside in the wallet when taxpayer money flows like honey in grants and expenditures from the new DHS. And this will continue until someone in GAO grows a set and stops the fraud, waste and abuse that will result from the creation of this new bureaucracy."
But no, instead of taking a deep breath and a pause after 9/11, the politicians in Congress rushed headlong into the issue and created this new home for every Cold War warrior able to draw a breath to work. You boys breathing easier now that you are back on the government payroll?
You can see more on this absolutely worthless government department in action at
http://monitor-post.blogspot.com/2007/10/another-government-loser-700-mhz-ps.html
And in the now this. Yesterday we find that the the oil spill plaguing San Francisco Bay has raised fresh questions about the changing mission of the U.S. Coast Guard (an agency that use to be in the Department of Transportation that is now a part of DHS-LVH), with critics saying the agency's new homeland security duties have eroded its ability to tackle such environmental disasters.
Last March, the Coast Guard disbanded its department that helped set up oil-spill response exercises and reassigned more than a dozen people to homeland security duties.
Way to go DHS! Let's do this the government way. Keep re-organizing that organizational chart every time you screw up. Remember the government has four ways to fix things when they are broke and under public scrutiny:
1. Conduct more training to fix the problem (this is the old Tailhook scandal principle)
2. Spend more taxpayer money to fix the problem.
3. Re-organize the government organizational chart or carve out a new government department.
4. A combination of any of the above or all three.
Bet we will see more personal pour back into this area of the CG mission after Congress gets a hold of them in hearings. But which other program will pay the cost when those personnel are moved? What other CG program will suffer?
You can read the complete story on all this online at the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-spill13nov13,1,5989374.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true